Sometimes you just have to realize when it's time to take a new direction, whether it's in your career, business or just in general!

This week has been a week of change and new beginnings. I feel like January has been a bit of a trial run for 2016 and February is the real start of a very exciting year.

It's really hard to be objective about something that you are putting all of your energy, money and future into, but I had what can only be described as an epiphany this week about my work and the direction I want to develop myself and the businesses in.

For me, the best part of setting up a business has been the fact that you wake up every day with a deep feeling of excitement in your stomach, because you are working on your own idea and creating your own path.

I guess recently I haven't been feeling that excitement, perhaps not for a few months really. Running a business is hardly a guaranteed road to success, in fact it often feels like navigating a meandering stream with about a million obstacles in your path. It's easy to let the difficulties grind you down and sap your enthusiasm and drive. I think this attrition is something which pretty much every business owner experiences at some point, especially during the formative first years.

As soon as I realised that some of my "business sparkle" had gone, I knew I had to sit down and assess why, alongside taking a good look at my own values and expectations from life.

When I looked at things closely, It was clear that I still loved the core premise of everything I was doing.

I'm still an avid coffee addict with a real curiosity and passion for exploring the world of the great beverage (wow, that's not corny at all!) There's obviously still a real personal connection with Vincent's Coffee and everything I have achieved there.

I'm also deeply committed to a world market where consumers can easily choose products which have been made in a fair, responsible and sustainable way. That's my personal belief in Bright Ethics validated.

Both of these businesses have great potential and are fundamentally grounded in things I believe in.

Once I realised that the problem wasn't "with them," so to speak, I had to have an honest look at myself. I guess I needed to perform some kind of "accountability audit" because with all the best will in the world, nobody is perfect and we all have periods where we let our focus drift.

Over the past few months I have felt pulled apart in about 100 directions, unable to make any kind of decisions because I simply couldn't see the wood for the trees. Again, I think this is a fairly common issue for small business owners, especially those who are involved in every single part of their business.

I needed a new strategy. I needed to consolidate my focus and attention onto a tangible and well defined set of projects.

I sat down and made a list of everything I was doing and then made a separate list of everything I enjoyed doing. If something didn't make it to the second list (and wasn't essential to the business, e.g. accounting) I decided to stop doing it. Pretty simple really.

I thoroughly believe that if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it properly and with real passion. I don't like to deal in half measures.

This culling and refocusing is all well and good, but it also dawned on me that I needed a way of holding myself accountable and recording my progress.

So, what better way than putting it all out there for everyone to see.

It was time to start pursuing one of my 25 goals and start documenting my progress through Vlogging about my journey as an "entrepreneur" and business owner.

Now I'm not really au fait with the YouTube editor or really anything, so you're going to have to bear with my simple click and talk videos for now! But hopefully if I can up my game through messing around, which is usually how I learn these things!